


so, you're a fatalist then?

by Dandybear



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Ensues, Canonical Character Death, F/F, How Do I Tag, Sacrifice Chloe Ending, The One Where They Make It To LA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 14:23:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12434655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandybear/pseuds/Dandybear
Summary: Fatalism: The view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do.Two timelines that never happen and the one that does.





	so, you're a fatalist then?

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, guess I'm back on my bullshit.
> 
> This is something I wanted to write since the end of LiS, I just didn't have enough details about Rachel before.
> 
> Everything hurts and I'm dying. 
> 
> (I wrote this in one sitting, so pardon any mistakes. The jumping around of past-present-future tense is intentional.)
> 
> Deck Nine, if you're reading this, give me a job.

1\. the one where they run away

 

So, let’s say that Chloe Price and Rachel Amber did leave that night. They packed their things and escaped via taxi to the junkyard, where they spent the night entwined upon a palette. They dodged parents and police alike in repairing the beaten up brown truck. Then, without insurance, nor license, made their way down the 101 to Los Angeles. Just the two of them.

 

They stop in Oswald State Park to look in awe at the ancient giants overhead. Rachel insists they take pictures. Chloe has a phone. Rachel produces a polaroid camera and Chloe bites the inside of her cheek so hard that it bleeds. The leg of the trip that follows is in sullen silence. Chloe sulks. Rachel snaps.

 

They argue.

 

They pull over at a gas station in Hauser. Rachel buys jerky and muffins while Chloe picks an apologetic late summer dandelion.

 

“It’s not even a flower anymore.” Rachel says at the peace offering.

 

“I know. It’s got so much more potential than that. It can go anywhere. All it needs is a little wind.” Chloe says.

 

She feels itchy and embarrassed, trying to be sweet.

 

Rachel blows the seeds away and kisses Chloe in the same motion.

 

They ignore their phones, turning off their carriers. There are no directions needed but straight ahead.

 

Well, not straight.

 

“More like Cooch Bay, am I right?” Chloe says at the ‘Now Entering’ sign.

 

Rachel’s laugh is a few drawn out snorts.

 

(They’re sixteen.)

 

The truck overheats after five hours on the road. There’s no heater and no matter how hot the weather’s been lately, the wind through a drafty truck freezes hands, noses, and immobile legs.

 

They eat at a roadside diner that serves Chinese food and all day breakfast. Chloe chatters, still nervous. She looks over her shoulder like there’s a deadly drug dealer after her. (Because there is.)

 

Rachel distracts Chloe with a game of footsie and a look that promises more when she brings up the question of where they’ll be sleeping.

 

They pick a motel with a parking lot that doesn’t face the highway and Rachel orders a room with one bed. Chloe feels sweat slide down her palms.

 

They kiss to avoid talking about what they’ve left behind. They fool around to distract themselves from the very real and present danger. They have sex to use up the adrenaline that pumps through them.

 

And afterwards Chloe will turn to Rachel and say,

 

“We don’t know each other at all.”

 

And Rachel will smile and follow Chloe’s warmth to whisper,

 

“Oh, I know you inside and out, Chloe Price.”

 

The truck breaks down in Eureka. Chloe tears at her hair and kicks the car, but she cannot get it to go.

 

The mechanic fees would eat up most of the money they have.

 

Two bus tickets to Los Angeles later and they’re shoulder to shoulder on the longest bus ride either have taken.

 

It’s not the wild road trip either wanted. It smells like ass and it’s way harder to cuddle.

 

And they make it to Los Angeles with sore legs and back, but they do make it.

 

Chloe almost kisses the pavement, feeling the loss of Arcadia Bay’s gravitational pull.

 

Both of their voicemail boxes are full.

 

“We should get new phones.” Chloe says.

 

Now that the adrenaline’s worn off, Rachel descends into a funk.

 

Neither know how to proceed. An apartment would be more cost effective than a motel, but that involves references and credit checks, and filling out scary looking paperwork. So, they move into a pink stucco building with a pool and Chloe carries Rachel over the threshold.

 

Then David shows up.

 

(But, that never happened anyway.

 

It would have been nice. That’s all.)

 

* * *

 

2\. the one where they walk to the finish line

 

But, suppose they did stay in school. Suppose they made a blood pact to take the world by storm, but to do it right. They’d stay in school, get good grades and buckle down. They twist into each other like two trees planted side by side.

 

Rachel stars in more plays and Chloe stops wasting chances and potential. She dyes her hair blue and Rachel dyes her hair red. They become a regular part of the Two Whales ambiance on weekends, sharing homework and milkshakes.

 

Chloe gives the money to Frank Bowers and he sets aside her ten percent for college. Then they part ways.

 

Rachel never meets Frank, except in passing. He gives her a second look. Who wouldn’t?

 

Rachel takes photography with Mark Jefferson and feels her cheeks heat when he compliments her, but she moves his hand when it brushes her thigh and tells him that her father is a lawyer.

 

Rachel kisses Nathan drunkenly at a cast party and she and Chloe have a huge fight about it.

 

But, then Rachel gives Chloe her bracelet with a renewed promise towards the future.

 

“And to your liberty.” She adds.

 

Because Chloe grits her teeth and bears the dick-tator sharing her mother’s bed. She smokes at the junkyard, not in the house, works steady hours, and keeps her scholarship.

 

That doesn’t stop her from vandalizing the girl’s bathroom on her last day of school. It doesn’t stop them from setting firecrackers off the reservoir and setting another tree on fire. It doesn’t stop them from piling into Rachel’s new car and taking the I-5 down to UCLA where they’re both enrolled.

 

They stop in Weed, California and make that photo their profile pictures on Facebook. (The way those annoying couples do.)

 

(Nathan Prescott, Max Caulfield, and 40 others liked this.)

 

Chloe will drop out in her first year, because she loves science, but hates school. She’ll bounce between kitchen and mechanical jobs before getting an offer of a tattoo apprenticeship. Her lines are clean and her hand is steady.

 

Rachel gets more sullen with each rejection from auditions. Her agent doesn’t know how to sell her. The men she meets ask for her to read raunchier roles.

 

She gets YouTube pranks and walk-on work.

 

Chloe practices scales that twist curve into a blue dragon wrapped around Rachel’s calf.

 

The same tattoo gets her a small part in the pilot of some gritty reboot of Baywatch.

 

Chloe gets texts from Max. She’s going to Blackwell for her senior year and thinks Victoria Chase is a huge bitch.

 

(She isn’t wrong.)

 

Rachel and Chloe sit on a bench in Venice Beach, popsicle drops dripping onto sticky fingers. A guy with a blonde hair who thinks he’s a pickup artist compliments Chloe on her eyes.

 

And Rachel says,

 

“Back off, Buddy. She’s with me.”

 

And the guy says, 

 

“Hot. Can I watch?”

 

Chloe throws her popsicle at him, smearing red on his pink shirt.

 

“My hero.” Someone says.

 

(But, that doesn’t happen either.

 

It would be so lovely it did.)

 

* * *

 

 

1\. the one you already know

 

They’ll never make it to New York, LA, or the open the road. There’s no UCLA, Tisch, or MIT. No Broadway or NASA.

 

They don’t make it past the town lines.

 

5 grams of GHB would be enough to knock someone on their ass. Problem is, Rachel’s been using hard drugs for three years now. She’s disoriented, slurring and swearing as she tries to stand. 10 grams of GHB just feels like going to sleep. Maybe when she wakes up this will all have been a bad dream. Someone leans over her with a soft voice.

 

“Chloe, your hands are freezing.” She mumbles.

 

Chloe wonders if this is the bathroom’s revenge against her. She regrets not listening to Frank’s warnings more. She regrets yelling at her mom that morning. She wonders if Max ever thought of her. The trigger pulls. She thinks of Rachel.

  
  


At her daughter’s funeral, Joyce Price will share a look a cross a pair of caskets with Rose Amber. What are you supposed to do when your reason for living dies? Why work a dead end job at a diner or stay married to a man who betrayed you if there’s no child you’re sacrificing for?

 

Does Rose scrub ineffectually at wine stains left behind by Rachel? Does she keep the door of her daughter’s bedroom shut and locked?

 

Steph Gingrich flies in from LA and chokes on tears. Her grief is louder than anyone else at the funeral and it should be embarrassing, but she just can’t stop crying.

 

There’s talk of tragedy and lost potentials. Bright girls with bright futures.

 

Max Caulfield will steal Principal Wells’s leather chair from his office with the help of Stella Hill and Dana Ward, because it’s very important for some reason. It has to do with grieving and they don’t ask follow up questions. They help her load it into a truck and drop it off at the local junkyard. It’s a shame, it’s such a nice chair.

 

Victoria Chase will produce the costumes for Proserpina and Ariel. The latter was donated by Juliet, because the understudy costume was lost in a fire. The masks will be retired in the drama department’s ‘In Memorial’ display.

 

People who saw that performance will talk about how the smoke from that big wildfire made the opening light a little more ethereal. How the villains went off script, but improvised dialogue so tender and raw.

 

That night will be in few people’s mind on the sunny day when two wooden caskets slide into the ground.

 

Max Caulfield will approach Rose Amber and Joyce Price.

 

“Can I have a piece of Rachel?” She’ll say.

 

And Rose will blanch, but Joyce will grasp the other woman’s wrist and explain.

 

“You want something of hers? Like Chloe’s necklace?”

 

Max will nod. She’ll drive that beaten up pickup truck down the 101 until she reaches the California border. She’ll stop at Pelican State Beach and toss the necklace and the bracelet she’s been wearing into the sea.

 

She’ll take a photo of the two intertwined on the sand below. Then she’ll tear the polaroid to pieces and leave it to the wind.

 

This is how they make it to California.

 

(That is what happens.

 

But, god, do we wish that it hadn’t.)

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Comments are my go-to pick-me-up.


End file.
